How to handle a redundancy

So, you’ve been made redundant.  Crap.  What are the first thoughts that go through your mind?  I’m going to assume that few of them are positive.  What are you going to do?  What are you going to tell your partner, the kids, your landlord?  Will you be able to afford to be off work?  How long will it take you to find another job?  The questions will go on, the worry will set in.  Redundancies are not supposed to be fun and games.  They’re what people dread.

Park those thoughts for a while.  Let me talk to you about “Vlad” (I’ve changed his name, but he knows who he is – and sorry if you don’t like being called Vlad).  I was chatting to Vlad some time ago and he had an idea of what he would like to do.  He had a solid job, paying good money.  He’d been there a while and had some prospects of promotion, but his career had slowed down.  Since I’ve known Vlad, leaving work and starting his own thing was a high priority, however the solid job and good pay kept him grounded and he didn’t know if he should or could rock the boat.  Even if he felt comfortable in resigning, when would be the ideal time to do it?

Well, email comes through from Vlad yesterday – “I’m being made redundant”.  Fan-bloody-tastic I think to myself.  It’s a habit of mine to post on Facebook, in response to someone saying they’ve been made redundant, “Congrats, well done!”.  People think I’m a bit of a nutter.  But let’s think about Vlad a bit more.  While some people will hear the words “you’re fired, you’ve lost your income and you’ve now got a lot to worry about”, I hear something different.  This:

“Excuse me Vlad, you know those ideas you were thinking of pursuing?

If you were wondering when the time is to go chase them, I’m going to say now.

Oh, and here is some money to go kick it off!”

Fan-bloody-tastic.  Redundancy is life’s way of telling you to move on, try something new.  Meet new people, learn something new.  Go for a better job, make changes.  Try setting up your own business.  Take off some time without the burden of the work you’ve got to come back to sitting over your head.  Depending your on your personality, you may be burdened with the reality of having to find a job when you get back, but you can deal with that.  To date, I’ve never had a client not be able to find another job after they’ve been made redundant.  Is that lucky?  I don’t think so.  Unemployment figures are low and long term unemployment is only a fraction of that.  Eventually, most people find a job.  We’re not in tough economic times so there are plenty of jobs out there.  Depending on how well you’ve managed your finances, it’s just a matter of how soon do you look and what do you look for?

If you’re up to your eyeballs in debt and have no savings – well, maybe you should have thought about that before buying the new fancy car, bigger house and long holidays.  The redundancy payment should help smooth that over.  But if you’re in a solid financial situation – this is not the time to be tame.  Quitting your job to start something new can be really hard – but being kicked out of the workplace nest and told to fly – well, you can make a lot out of that.

Embrace your redundancy – you may never get another one.